Beneath Winter Sand

by Vickie McKeehan

  “This is Pelican Pointe. We rarely have a crime wave here that fills up my plate. I’ll do everything I can to help you find the truth. I promise.”

  It was almost five o’clock when veterinarians Keegan and Cord Bennet opened the door to the police station and looked around.

  “Is Brent here?” Keegan asked Eastlyn.

  “Sure. Go on in. After a super busy day, things have finally slacked off. I guess you heard.”

  “That’s why we’re here.”

  “Is it the noise? Because there’s not much we can do about the digging. And even if Caleb hadn’t found the remains, he’d be the one making just as much of a racket.”

  “It isn’t the noise,” Keegan said. “I think I might have some information about the remains.”

  “Really? Wow. You and half the town.”

  Brent overheard part of the conversation and walked out into the small lobby. “Cord, Keegan, how’s it going?” He noted Keegan looked worried, similar to how Hannah had looked earlier.

  Keegan stood wringing her hands. “It was fine until I came back to shore—someone reported an injured seal south of here near Wilder State Park. I went out to see if I could locate it. But when I got back I saw the commotion next door and heard about what Caleb found.”

  Cord eyed Brent as if trying to convey something with his facial expression. “Keegan has something to tell you about something she witnessed a long time ago.”

  “No problem. Come on in to the office. You look like you could use something to drink.”

  “I don’t suppose you have a margarita back here with a double shot of tequila,” Keegan quipped.

  “Best I can offer you is a cupful of water from our dispenser. Have a seat.”

  “I’ll take it.”

  Brent went out to the water cooler in the lobby and filled a paper cup, brought it back to Keegan. “What’s up? You’re upset about something.”

  Keegan guzzled down the contents and set the cup down on Brent’s desk. “I know who buried those remains at Bradford House. It was the owner. But he wasn’t alone.”

  Eight

  The air had left the room by the time Brent recovered enough to speak. “You saw him do that?”

  Keegan nodded and leaned closer to the desk. “I remembered an incident from when I was a kid. But before I explain that, you know I grew up right next door to Bradford House.”

  “Sure. The Fanning Rescue Center is right next door.”

  “My grandparents, Porter and Mary, raised me in that house where Cord and I live now. But that huge estate next door wasn’t always there. At first it was a vacant lot. My grandparents wanted to buy that acreage from the couple who owned it. Townsend was their name I found it this afternoon in a bunch of old papers belonging to my grandparents. According to those papers, the plan was to extend the rescue center beyond its borders and make it larger. My grandfather had been eyeing that property for years and couldn’t get the owners to budge off the price. There are notations in the papers I found that say Douglas knew my grandparents wanted the land and went behind their back to get it. My grandfather makes it clear that Douglas drove up to San Francisco for the sole purpose of wining and dining the Townsends to get them to sell him the property. It worked. And, you see the results. Douglas got the land, built the big mansion, and proceeded to act like a frat boy by throwing a string of loud, obnoxious, lavish parties, for the next several decades. The man eventually became the mayor and the talk of the town. It seems fitting now that he still is.”

  “You mentioned an incident. What did you see?”

  “I was about thirteen. It was winter. I was in the process of doing my chores before school, which included feeding our resident patients. At the time, we had a very large elephant seal who barked a lot. That morning, he was causing his usual ruckus and I was trying to calm him down. From next door came this booming voice. It was Douglas yelling at me to keep the animal quiet. I won’t repeat the string of obscenities that sailed out of his mouth. If not for his making a scene at the time, I probably wouldn’t even have looked over the fence. But I did. I saw Douglas and a woman digging a hole, right about where the forensic team is focusing now. I watched them toss a bundle, something wrapped in a blanket, striped, in that damn pit they’d dug. That’s what I remember. They dropped the striped blanket in the hole and started shoveling back in the dirt almost immediately.”

  Brent sat back in his chair. “Did you ever tell anyone about this?”

  “I didn’t know it was a baby!” Keegan shouted. “How could I have known that? I went on to school and didn’t think twice about the incident.”

  “I’m sorry. Could you recognize the woman again if I showed you a picture?”

  Keegan let out a shaky sigh and looked over at Cord. “Didn’t I tell you he would ask me that?”

  “You did.”

  Keegan swiped a hand through her hair. “The one thing you need to know about Douglas is he had a parade of women that came and went. It was hard to keep up and difficult to differentiate one from another. Men, too, stopped in at all hours of the day and night. But if I had to give you a description from that day, I’d say…I remember red hair like mine, only more…stylish, not as wild, but more tamed. She was tall, like a model. Whenever she’d come for the weekend I remembered her car, she drove a fancy red BMW, sporty thing.”

  Eastlyn stood listening from the doorway and traded knowing looks with Brent. “She’s a good witness, Brent.”

  “Yep. Very. Good account of what went down, Keegan. You may have just saved me a lot of investigative time.”

  “So, it helps? What I saw that day so long ago helps? Because try to imagine what I felt like today when I learned what was in that hole. I was sick, Brent. Ask Cord. I’ve been mortified ever since I learned they threw a baby away. I have to live with that.”

  “It’s not your fault. You were just a young kid. No one could’ve predicted they were burying a child. No one could have imagined that kind of evil living right next door. What you’ve just unloaded is a huge break in the case for us. We’re grateful you came in and didn’t keep this to yourself.”

  “How could I keep that kind of thing to myself? Not after what I remembered seeing, the callous, nonchalant way Bradford yelled at me that morning, as if that was the most important thing getting the seal to stop barking instead of the fact he was burying an infant.”

  Brent stood up. “You go on home now. I’ll write up an official report based on everything you told me for the file. You can bet I’ll be in touch. I’ll ask you to sign your account of what you saw. Cord, you see to it Keegan stops worrying about this, at least for tonight. There’s nothing she could’ve done at thirteen to prevent this from coming back to haunt us all.”

  Cord took his wife’s hand and started for the door. “She knows that, but she also knows that even an animal deserves a better burial than what this baby got. In fact, in our business when an animal dies we give it a little ceremony. What bothers Keegan is that this child was tossed away like garbage. That’s something the rest of us with a working heart have a tough time understanding.”

  Caleb had driven Hannah back home and stayed to fix her something to eat. It was the first time he’d been inside the same little bungalow that his sister-in-law had once occupied.

  “I’m perfectly capable of making my own dinner,” Hannah grumbled, even though she was secretly glad he’d trailed her home.

  “I know you are, but you’ve had a rough afternoon.”

  “And you haven’t? It isn’t everyday a person finds a skull belonging to a baby.”

  “Still trying to get that out of my head, thank you. Here’s hoping that keeping busy will do the trick. What do you have on hand to eat?”

  Caleb paced the kitchen throwing open cabinet doors and peering in like he was taking inventory, and then concluded the result on his own. “You don’t have much in the way of food here.”

  “The space doesn’t hold a lot. I told you it was tiny,” Ha
nnah explained as she watched Caleb move around the mini kitchen, looking in every nook and cranny.

  “Yeah, but I had no idea you have zero cabinet space to speak of and barely enough room to turn around. Where do you put your canned goods or cereal or snack foods?”

  “What is it with you and this thing you have about a huge pantry?”

  “I like having a place to unload the groceries. Every kitchen needs one. I don’t think I could live here in something this small.”

  “I make do.” She walked over to a little door near the back and opened it up. “Eastlyn added some shelves to the broom closet and started using it to hold groceries. This is a simple guest house and not much more. I was lucky to find it. I couldn’t believe how little Keegan and Cord wanted in rent for this place.”

  Caleb inspected the tiny cupboard and shook his head. “We need to buy groceries. You go take a hot shower and relax. I’ll run to Murphy’s Market and pick up two ribeyes, some potatoes for baking, and the makings for a salad. How’s that sound?”

  “Sounds wonderful. But you don’t have to do all that.”

  He met her halfway in the middle of the kitchen and took her chin, tipped it up. “After what happened today, I don’t want to spend tonight alone.”

  “That makes two of us.”

  “Then it’s settled.” He gave her a friendly swat on her backside and started out the door. “I’ll be back in half an hour.”

  Left alone, Hannah knew what she had to do. She had to call Denton and Cassie to let them know what was going on. She didn’t want either one, hearing about the remains on the six o’clock newscast.

  She took out her cell phone, found Denton’s name in her contacts, and hit the number to dial.

  The voice on the other end was a warm reminder she had family. “What’s up, baby girl?”

  “Hi, Dad. I’ve had kind of a rough day.” She started to cry and through a blubbering explanation, she was finally able to tell Denton what she suspected.

  While Hannah explained things to her family, Caleb pushed a cart up and down the aisles at the market, chunking in what he needed to make dinner. He didn’t expect to run into Beckham. The teenager was with his girlfriend Faye, a little brunette with big chocolate eyes who had a guarded demeanor around other people.

  Since Beckham had found a home with Quentin and Sydney, Caleb decided the teenager had put on some much-needed weight.

  Beckham eyed the stuff Caleb had in his cart. “You actually eat arugula? You know that’s dandelion weeds, right?”

  Caleb slapped Beckham on the back. “Wrong. They’re two different plants altogether. Arugula is an annual with a peppery taste while dandelion is a perennial with a much more bitter flavor. You’d know that if you studied that plant chart I gave you.”

  Beckham made a face. “It sounded too much like homework.”

  From the side, Faye inched closer to Caleb. In a low voice, she murmured, “You’re the one who found that poor little baby.”

  “Unfortunately I am. Are the news vans still parked on Ocean Street?”

  “They’re crawling around like ants,” Beckham replied and clutched the basket he carried in his hand a little tighter. “Such a terrible thing to do to a tiny kid like that. Who do you think put it there?”

  “No idea. That’s what Brent’s working on.” Caleb was convinced he needed to change the subject. “What are you guys up to?”

  “Sydney sent me out of the house to shop for supper. It’s an excuse to get rid of me, us, so she and Dad can talk about what to do once the cops get done with the yard. I think for us Bradford House might be history.”

  “Are they thinking of moving out of there permanently?” Caleb asked.

  “Maybe. They might keep the house. But they don’t know what to do about, you know, marking the spot or whatever for…later. They think something should be done, something put there, like a marker. They’re still batting the subject around. I’m just not sure, they’ll want to move back in, even though some of our stuff is still there.”

  Faye shifted her feet. “It was my idea to put up the marker once they find out the baby’s identity, of course.”

  “That’s not a bad plan,” Caleb said.

  “Who do you think she is?” Faye wondered.

  Caleb turned to look at Faye. “She? What makes you think it was a girl?”

  It was Beckham who went into detail. “Those guys doing the digging found a multi-colored blanket with pink stripes on it. Faye and I were looking through a pair of binoculars when we saw them drag it out of the dirt.”

  “You guys were spying?”

  Beckham grinned. “We used the trail that leads around to the cliffs. Not even the reporters have found it yet.”

  “Pink points to one specific gender,” Faye reminded them. “At least that’s what Sydney says. She thinks most baby boys wouldn’t have pink stripes on a blanket. What do you think?”

  “I think she’s right. I wouldn’t want a pink blanket,” Beckham added.

  “You would if you were cold,” Faye pointed out. “A baby would be way too young to know the difference anyway.”

  Caleb stared at the wise Faye. “You’re pretty smart. Women would know more about stuff like that than I would.” But an interesting turn of events, he thought. And he couldn’t wait to pass that information along to Hannah.

  “We gotta go,” Beckham announced. “Sydney’s waiting on us to get back with the fixings for spaghetti.”

  “See you guys later. Take care.”

  Caleb wheeled his car into the frozen food aisle with the intent to pick up ice cream. He was bent at the waist over the freezer section when a heavy object banged him across the back. He straightened up in time to see Phyllis Caldwell drawing back to whack him again with her purse.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Caleb cried out. “Quit that!”

  Phyllis had to be near seventy. But for an older woman, she packed a punch. “It’s what you deserve, disturbing that little baby the way you did. How dare you dig him up like that!”

  He caught the woman’s arm in mid-swing. “I was hired to do a landscaping job. I had no idea I’d stumble on a body buried there. It’s not like I dug it up on purpose.”

  Phyllis didn’t shirk from her mission and landed another blow, this time to Caleb’s shoulder, knocking him back a step.

  “What’s wrong with you? Cut it out! Now! Why are you doing this?” He narrowed his eyes. “Unless...do you know who that baby belongs to?”

  “No! And I don’t care who it belongs to. It doesn’t matter. I heard the bones came up in pieces. Shame on you, Caleb Jennings. It isn’t enough you belong to that murderer, that mentally disturbed Eleanor Richmond, the one who’s responsible for killing my niece. Brooke was a sweetheart and your mother took her away from us. And now, today, I hear you have to go and dig up a baby’s body right out of the ground.”

  Murphy walked up about that time and grabbed Phyllis’s arm. “What the hell is going on here?”

  “Ask Mrs. Caldwell,” Caleb grumbled as he pushed his cart out of Phyllis’s reach. “She’s talking crazy. That body has nothing to do with her niece.”

  “Yeah, well, if Brooke hadn’t fallen for your spineless father she wouldn’t be dead now. She’d probably have a couple of kids of her own.” Phyllis dabbed at her eyes. “I didn’t even get to plan her wedding. Her brother, Ryan, and I miss her every single day.”

  “I thought you guys lived over in Scotts Valley,” Murphy noted.

  Phyllis opened her purse and brought out a tissue. “We used to. But an opening came up at the elementary school and Julianne, the principal, offered Ryan a position there to teach fourth grade. This is his second semester there.”

  “You can’t come in here Phyllis and start attacking people with your purse,” Murphy explained while directing Caleb to move down the aisle.

  Caleb took the hint and headed for checkout.

  By the time he got back to Hannah’s place, he’d calmed down eno
ugh to start dinner. But Hannah met him at the door with a frown.

  “Durke called me in to work tonight. It seems it’s Darla’s night on, but she caught her baby’s cold and Geniece isn’t picking up her cell. On week nights, there’s usually just the one waitress on duty. Looks like tonight it’s me.”

  “Why am I not surprised? I guess spending time alone tonight just wasn’t in the cards. Did you talk to your family?”

  “I did. Dad was ready to jump in the car with Cassie and head here tonight. But I persuaded him to hold off and wait for confirmation.” She noticed the strained look on Caleb’s face and took his chin in her hand. “What happened while you were gone?”

  He set the bags on the counter and started unloading the steaks and perishable items into the fridge. “It’s amazing what you can learn at the grocery store. According to Beckham and Faye, the forensic team found a pink-striped blanket in the hole with the bones.”

  “Already? Uh, that would indicate the baby was a girl.”

  “That seems to be the general consensus, and if true, changes things quite a bit for you.”

  “That means the baby might not be Micah.” Relief moved through her like a bolt of lightning. But that still didn’t explain Caleb’s demeanor. “You aren’t this upset learning about a blanket. What else happened?”

  He told her about the run-in with Phyllis Caldwell. “She’s Brooke Caldwell’s aunt. Like everyone else in town somehow Phyllis got wind of the news at Bradford House. I guess it brought back bad memories. Once she spotted me at Murphy’s, she lit into me and decided to remind me that my so-called mother is the reason Brooke’s dead.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Not really. There’s probably some truth in that statement. But even though I had nothing to do with it, for a few minutes there this afternoon, I was the closest thing Phyllis could bop on the head out of frustration.”

  “I’m so sorry. That isn’t fair to you.”

  “Not everything about my parents has ever landed in the fair column.”